Cold Butter

Butter is blessed stuff. Agitated from fermented cream for our delight and delectation, there really is nothing better. On a cold and frosty morning, when you first reach for the butter dish and spy that bar of lustrous gold within, well, whimsy knows no bounds. Whilst peering into the cupboard, it is quite easy to imagine some rosy cheeked maiden forming a block with wooden scotch hands on wooden bench, working away and puffing a curly lock upwards as her forearms flex forwards and back. However, impish thoughts are normally fleeting and rush by because hunger beckons and the notion of a layer of ochre, thick and laden upon bread quickly overwhelms. Hands fumble in the cutlery drawer, eager and pensive and a knife is whipped out. Flashing silver before your eyes, the knife is then plunged forth and a slice of yellow fat, pure and true, is cleaved out, all wrinkled and fudgy on the blade. Swiftly and urgently, it is then brought down onto the crumb, to spread out that patty of joy evenly, cleanly and to the edges of the crust. For teeth to sink decadently into, for the promise of sweet salty deliverance, for the bliss that butter can bring.

And then it happens.

You tear a huge hole in the bread.

Worse things can happen and have. Exercising caution and warming up the butter first in a microwave, only to reduce it to a puddle in 5 seconds can cause considerable anguish. Spying a daughter with a finger in the white ceramic dish is marginally worse, considering her penchant for cleaning out toe jam with the very same finger. Discovering that there is no butter in the house at all and that you have to resort to spreading Stork, bloody Stork, on your toast is reprehensible, an insult to humanity.

But tearing a huge, HUGE, muthafricking hole in the middle of a slice of bread because your butter is too cold..............

Well, it's like having my heart ripped out.